A day after FDA went public about issues with Indiana-based Chamberlain Farms – the source of a Salmonella outbreak that killed three and sickened 270 – a lawyer for the farm said testing by a microbiologist hired by the farm suggests the bacteria that caused the outbreak didn’t come from the farm’s fields.

Chamberlain Farms’ attorney, Gary Zhao, said in a statement today that the “overwhelming evidence” points to land adjacent to the Owensville farm’s melon fields as the likely source of the bacterial contamination federal investigators found on the farm’s cantaloupes.

He says that means the farm’s packing facilities, equipment or operations weren’t the source of the salmonella.

The lawyer needs a lesson on the U.S. version of strict liability.